


Ebony and Ivory

by Knollem



Category: Steven Universe (Cartoon)
Genre: Alternate History, Alternate Universe, But arn't Human eather, Gen, Mystery, OCs are not Gems, Original Character(s)
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-11-26
Updated: 2017-11-26
Packaged: 2019-02-07 03:01:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,572
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12831927
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Knollem/pseuds/Knollem
Summary: As the world is protected from evil threats by the Crystal Gems, two mysterious individuals have been charged with protecting the world from the Gems.Follow Ebony and Ivory as they watch over beach city and Steven.Slowly uncover how their presence has changed the past and watch with us as it changes the future.





	Ebony and Ivory

 

**Ebony**

Sun, you loved the sun. You could just stand in a good beam of sunlight with your shades on and toes in some moist earth for hours on end, you’ve never had to fear burning for your dark skin simply drinks the solar rays, and adds them to your personal reserves. Let your sister take the lonely night with its pale moon and dim stars, you’ll take the sun, all day every day, sunrise to sunset you will stand here at attention, in front of the gate and in the light.

Yes, glorious golden rays will be your pay as you stands your eternal daylight vigil. You and your dearest sister’s sworn duty to Gard the temple gates, so that they may never open, so that no mere mortal man may pass thruWait is that humming you hear?

Oh, looks like Stevens back from the Big Donut. You should probably open the gate for him.

“Welcome back Steven, I see you have made quit the acquisition.” You say as you let the, in all likelihood, mere mortal boy pass thru the sacred temple gates in the sacred temple aluminum chain-link fence.

“Yep, it’s the cookie cat mini-fridge from the Big Donut, Sadie let me have it for free.” Steven said, stopping to show you his prize. “I’m going to go show it to the Crystal Gems.”

“Hmmm. I should probably escort you to the house.” You say, a recent memory choosing just now to re assert itself. “There was an incursion while you were out, Ivory has already gone to assist but enemy units might still be in your abode.” You walk off after Steven, coincidently forgetting to close the gate behind you, further cementing the whole sworn duty thing from before was just you being overly dramatic for your own amusement, the only real reason they still have the gate was because Ivory was being pointlessly stubborn and argumentative when Rose wanted to take it down.

“Wait! The Gems are fighting a monster in my room right now? And Ivory is helping them? Oh, man I got to see this!” With this Steven takes off, squeezing thru the gap between the ribs of one of the giant skeletons littering this side of the beach. This forces you to lengthen your strides to keep up with the youth while walking around, although thin enough you are much too tall to fallow him directly through the divide without contorting into a strange angle.

In all likelihood though the shortcut was going to get Steven to the door first, so you better arm up now, with any luck Steven would not be attacked the moment he opened the door.

 

**Ivory**

A flic of the wrist and the last of your senbons left your hand and found a new home in the eye of yet another Centipeetle, the super-basic effect connected to that one started to neutralize the gem beasts acid but it didn’t damage it enough to poof it. It did however get its attention witch was both good and bad, for while that was the intended affect you were going for but now your disarmed. You shoved your fist into your mouth and with a release of light and a ‘twang’ sound withdrew a trio of throwing needles, one between each finger.

Now if you could just time this right…

“Guy, GUYS! Aaah!” Steven said as he was attack the moment he opened the door.

Your attention is unceremoniously yanked to the front door just long enough to see the Centipeetle affronting young Steven to be taken out by a black bolt lancing in from outside.

Your lanky sis pokes her head into the house, bo staff in hand and announces “Stevens Home” just before the Centipeetle barrels into you.

A whip wraps around it as you clock it with a fist full of six inch spikes.

As Amethyst uses her whip to yank the Centipeetle off you she grunts “Sup, Steven?”

You are now frusterated as you look for another enemy lure into the trap you set for that last one.

There’s one.

“Awesome! What are these things?”

A jump and a kick and it is sent on a collision course for your trap

“Ugh! Sorry, Steven. We’ll get these Centipeetles out of your room. Ivory what have I told you about setting up traps in the house.” Pearl complains as the big bug poofs from the dozen odd super-basic needles that erupted out of the floorboard it landed on. ”You’re putting holes in the flooring!”

Your summoning circle technique is one of the tricks you’re most proud of.

Amethyst while poofing a Centipeetle of her own and picking her nose chooses to inform the rest of you “Um, you guys? These things don’t have gems.”

“That means there must be a mother somewhere nearby.” Garnet says as she quickly poofs a Centipeetle with a punch.

Oh that’s just what you needed today, it probably huge to. Giant monster attacks mean a ton of paperwork for every dollar of property damage and who has to fill it out, not the crystal gems, not even Ebony. Poor old Ivory gets saddled with the whole thing ever time.

“We should really find it be for wrecks anything” you say.

“Oh! Oh! Can I come?! Can I?! can I?!”

Well Steven certainly is excited, wait is that the mini fridge from the donut shop?

Another bug flies into you from the side as you’re momentarily distracted again.

 

**Ebony**

You watch as the Centipeetle you sent flying with a wack from your staff collides into the side of a momentarily distracted Ivory.

“Steven, until you learn to control the powers in your gem," Pearl snaps a Centipeetle’s neck "we’ll take care of protecting humanity, okay?” she says in that motherly way of hers.

Ivory is now wrestling the larva, the thing probably outweighs your tiny sister who is by far the smallest person in the room. 

“Aw, man.” Says Steven before being sidetracked as sees one of the last of the raiding the fridge “Hey! Get out of there! Go on! Shoo! Shoo! Aw! They got into everything! Not cool!”

Ivory now has her foe pined on its back and has started malling it like a deranged ally cat, Ivory often reminds you of an ally cat, she has an constant unkemptness about her, her coat once a pristine white now stained the yellows and browns of the dirt ground into it from her day to day.

Garnet punches and poofs the fridge intruder as Steven notices that the freezer is full of Cookie Cats “No way. I-it can't be! Wha-where did you get these?! I thought they stopped making them!”

Pearl smiles “Well, we heard that, too, and since they’re your favorite...”

“We went out and stole a bunch.” Interrupts Amethyst.

At this point Ivory’s opponent gives up the ghost and goes poof “Wait what? I’m I going to get a call about this when I get back to the office?”

Pearl rolls her eyes “Don’t worry Ivory, I went back and paid for them.”

“That doesn’t necessarily mean I won’t get a call about it.”

“The whole thing was my idea.” Says Garnet as she dismisses her gauntlets. 

“It was everyone’s idea.” Argues Amethyst.

“Not Really.” “Gee Garnet does that mean you’re the one going to fill out the paperwork for this if someone starts complaining about it?” A huffy Ivory sarcastically asks as Garnet nonchalantly turns her head away from her.

You however shudder at the word paperwork

“All that matters is that Steven is happy.” Says Pearl And then Steven Start to sing and you find yourself happy too.

 

**Ivory**

A little time had passed since Stevens gem glowed and you have returned to the your office and Ebony has returned to sunning herself on the beach and calming she was guarding the gate.

She hadn’t even closed it.

You should get started on your inbox, you know no one else is going to, but you’ve been stalling for a while now.

Mostly that’s involved calling your contacts and asking if anyone’s seen a giant acid spiting centipede, no dice so far. You’re not surprised.

So now you’ve started to set the stage for the inevitable showdown, you just finished putting a stronger version of the super-base trap you used before on the back of the stone hand when Steven showed up.

“Hi Ivory, Lar and Sadie wanted me to give you this.”

You took the bag of donuts and small collection of papers from him “What! They are requesting another new dumpster! What happened to the last one?”

“Well Amethyst was showing me…” ”Right, right. Say no more.” Ooooo. You were going to kill that gem. Or at lest poof her, paperwork was just so much more annoying when the property damage was pointless. Oh? Steven was still standing there shuffling his feet, what did he want?

“Um, Ivory, I know you and Ebony aren’t Gems, but you can do a lot of stuff gems can. Like summon weapons and stuff. So I was wondering if you could tell me how you did it, Pearl said I had to work really hard, but Amethyst said I had to not try at all, so I’m a bit confused.”

You look in the bag. Oh ho ho, honey crullers yum yum. “I guess I could help, you see it’s a bit of both there philosophies” You close the bag and put it down on top of a nearby giant skull

“As Amethyst said, at the root of the thing it’s all about instinct, but like Pearl told you there’s no need to be dummy about it. You got to learn what makes your instincts tick so you can trick them into doing what you want them to when you want them to.”

Steven looks like that has clear up absolutely nothing to him so you try a little harder.

“Take me for example, I come to learn I am vary territorial, if something threatens something that I consider mine…” you bring your hand up to your cheek as your lower left canine, the one always poking up over your lip, starts to glow a bright light and suddenly a new needle is in your hand. “I instinctively summon my weapon to defend it.”

The constitution of this one different from the super-basic ones you were using earlier, the ability to alter what martial your weapon is made of seems to be a trait unique to you, this particular needle is made of chalk. “But I am a cunning, forward thinker who has the ability to see danger coming and think ahead. This allows me to take an instinctive _re_ -action…”

You use the chalk to draw a circle on the scull around your donuts. 

”And turn it into a tool for _pre_ -action.”

Your tooth and chalk circle both light up as you charge the summoning circle.

“Their, those donuts are now marked as mine, and if anyone but me tries to take them they will suffer the consequences” you crossed your arms and grinned as you saw the ‘So Cool’ look on Stevens face.

That’s when a seagull decided it was a good idea to try and swipe your Crullers. With a loud squawk the gull was miraculously able to dodge the resulting bed of basic needles with nothing more than some singed toes, your food however was a different story.

You heard a whispered “Your donuts, noooo” from Steven, the paper bag shredded and said donuts little more than a puddle of melted soap now.

You dismiss the chalk quill and pulled three more of a different make from your tooth “Meh, no big loss Steven. What are a few donuts to me when I can make my own sweets?” You put one of the candy quills in your mouth and hand the other two to Steven, which seems to cheer him up.

Good, you’ve long since come to view Steven and his happiness as also yours, something you instinctively try to protect.

 

**Ebony**

“Hey, Ebony.” Oh Steven showed up again, you turn to him.

“Ivory gave me two, do you want one?” He holds up two of your sisters senbons, given the circumstances they are probably the type made of illusionary candy. You might not be as into ‘food’ as Amethyst or Ivory but there are a few thing you enjoy, sweets being one of them so you take the boy up on his offer.

“So I was just talking with Ivory about weapon summoning. I told her that Pearl said to work really hard and Amethyst said to not try at all, so she told me that meant I had to trick my instincts… I think?”

You nod along as he talks, that all sounds like things those respective individuals would say regarding that topic. Steven is looking at you now with rapid attention as if he was expecting you to say something. You have no idea what.

He looks to the side shyly “Um, I was wondering if you could tell me how to summon one.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Hmmm, that’s a rather tricky question. You have to take some time to ponder it and then more time to put it into words but eventually you had it.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

“Wait.”

Steven stops mid step. He had gotten a good few paces away from you. You guess you took too long and he started to leave without you realising, best speed it up.

“You just have to wait for it. You’ll discern the convoking of armaments sometime hereafter, it will be fortune guiding you during your inauguration to the art but then hark with vigilance and you’ll determine your own modus operandi in due time.” Hopefully this clears up his confusion, your not the best with discerning emotions from faces but he has that faraway look in his eyes he sometimes gets when talking to you so you think that means he's got it.

 

 

 

 

Steven has continued to look at you expectedly for some time after you finish talking. You wonder why?

 

 

 

 

“Um, aren’t you going to summon your weapon and do something cool? Everyone else did.”

You guess you could do that too. You raise your sunglasses reveling the black wooden knot in place of your right eye becoming engulfed by an even deeper darkness. A black bolt lances out of your knot-eye and off across the yard, it ricochets off of boulders and bones around the beach before bouncing back in your deration. Moments before the bolt of darkness can hit you in the face your hand snap up snatching it out of mid-air revealing it to be your weapon, a bo staff of black wood.

You pose with your staff and grin as you see the ‘So Cool’ look on Stevens face.

 

**Ivory**

Project: Star Watcher

Date: [REDACTED]

Agent Ivory reporting that on this day at [REDACTED] hours, subject S.U has manifested subject R. Qurtz shield ability, talk among the Crystal Gems hint that his apprenticeship may start in earnest soon.

In other note, one(1) [REDACTED] code named “Centipeedle” was encountered and captured. Has been deemed at this time too dangerous for Sanctuary and had been moved to Purgatory. Damage in this encounter was minimal, limited to the [REDACTED] perimeter fence and one(1) mini fridge. Nether item marked priority for repair or replacement at this time.

**Author's Note:**

> Hi, I am so happy to be posting this for you, I really had to wrestle with my dyslexia and righting anxiety. If I made any spelling mistakes or used the wrong word please inform me. Updates may be a bit slow but be patient, in the mean time please share your theories in the comments; todays topic is the origin of the giant skeletons on the beach .
> 
> Next Chapter: Not one but Two Redeyes are involved.


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